Reviews from various genres, read at the speed of light.

The Naturals

I've usually really liked books by this author, but I wasn't so thrilled with this one. The concept behind it is that a few special teenagers have a "natural" gift for analyzing people that the FBI would like to take advantage of to find serial killers. Our narrator, Cassie, got raised to analyze people by her con artist mom, who was presumably murdered several years ago. Cassie never felt like she fit in with her other relatives, so when she gets the offer to join this team and live in a house together, she goes for it and somehow her relatives agree. The other kids are generally skilled but creepy and Cassie has two dubious love interests in the house/team that I could not for the life of me figure out which to root for, if any. Both have issues, to say the least. Cassie seems the sanest of the bunch. If you're thinking this sounds like a dubious government program, uh...yeah, kinda is. They're "supposed" to only work on cold cases, but yeah right.

Anyway, a serial killer busts out that seems to have some kind of connection to Cassie's mother, making Cassie a target and getting the kids involved in the case even though they're not supposed to be (again, yeah right). It was generally creepy and weird, though I will say that the "whodunit" was genuinely surprising and out of left field.

Overall, I can't really think of much to say here. It wasn't the best, it wasn't the worst, mostly it was just creepy and dubious and kinda shady. I used to watch Criminal Minds and then eventually got kind of tired of it so maybe I'm fatigued on the idea, and also I read this article recently which made me feel not so into the idea of a "natural" either. I'm going to give it three stars, on the "it's not so much that it's bad and more that I just don't think I'm into it, but others might be" logic.